Recently, image forming apparatuses such as multifunction peripherals and digital copiers are often installed in daily commodity stores or the like such as convenience stores and supermarkets, and such image forming apparatuses are mainly used, for example, when a user that uses the store takes a copy of an original.
Incidentally, in recent convenience stores, the portion of the store that faces the street and walkway is entirely encased in glass, and products are displayed such that people walking along the walkway can know the state of products inside the store at a glance. In an ordinary example of a convenience store, as shown in FIG. 14, a bookshelf 510 is placed along a glass window 501 having a large area beside an entrance 500, and an image forming apparatus A is placed along a glass window 502 having a small area beside the entrance 500. Also, an unshown register counter is disposed behind the image forming apparatus A within the store. In such an in-store arrangement, paper advertisements 505 such as posters are directly posted, facing outside of the store, to the glass windows 501 and 502, so that various publicity activity to pedestrians is carried out. Also, publicity activity to customers inside of the store is carried out by posting paper advertisements in a slight amount of open space of a display shelf within the store.
With this sort of publicity activity, it is difficult to frequently change advertisements, so there is the problem that detailed publicity activity cannot be performed depending on time spans, in which, for example, advertising targeted to businessmen is carried out during a time span in which many businessmen pass by, and advertising targeted to housewives or students is carried out during a time span in the daytime in which there are many housewives or students.
Also, the technique in which the walkway-side of the store is entirely encased in glass and advertisements are posted on that glass face is also adopted by real estate companies and the like, so that various real estate advertisements are posted all over the glass face wall and thus provided to passers-by. However, in this case as well, it is necessary for employees to manually remove information of real estate that is under a rental contract or purchase contract, and post new real estate information or the like, so there is the problem that removal, posting, or the like is frequently forgotten, and therefore the provided information may not be the newest information.
On the other hand, at present, as described above, the image forming apparatus placed in each store is mainly used by a user of the store only when taking a copy of an original, and is rarely used for other purposes. For example, Patent Documents 1 to 3 referenced below propose a way of improving the usage efficiency of such image forming apparatuses.
Patent Document 1 (JP 2002-329139A) describes an advertisement information processing system in which a wall face display and a printer are connected to each other and placed in a store, and when a print button that corresponds to advertisement information that has been displayed in the wall face display is pressed, it is possible to print the advertisement information for which that print button was pressed with the printer.
Patent Document 2 (JP 2002-156873A) describes an image processing apparatus in which an image processing apparatus that is a copy machine and a cash register are connected by a LAN, and when capturing a poster image original that has been placed on a platen of the copier, the poster image is displayed in an operation screen of the copier, and is displayed in a display apparatus of the cash register via the LAN.
Patent Document 3 (JP 2002-55501A) describes a configuration in which a power supply portion that supplies power to an image forming apparatus and a display apparatus is provided in the floor or a side face of the image forming apparatus, and by connecting both the image forming apparatus and the display apparatus to the power supply portion, it is possible to use both the display apparatus and the image forming apparatus, and even if either the image forming apparatus or the display apparatus is disconnected from the power supply portion, it is possible to use the apparatus that is connected to the power supply portion.
As described above, there have been proposals to increase advertising publicity functionality using an image forming apparatus, by connecting the image forming apparatus to a display apparatus, and printing advertising information displayed in the display apparatus with the image forming apparatus, or displaying a poster image that has been captured with the image forming apparatus in an operation screen of the image forming apparatus or on a display apparatus of a cash register.
However, with the technology described in Patent Document 1, it is necessary to install a display along the entire walkway-side wall face, and connect this display to a printer installed within the store with a communications cable, so much installation work is needed, and installation in each store is necessary, so there is the problem that installation work is very complicated. Also, there is the problem that after installation is performed once, it is not possible to easily change the layout according to circumstances.
Further, in the technology described in Patent Document 2, although advertising information can be displayed in an operation screen of an image forming apparatus or a display screen of a cash register, this is a publicity advertisement to customers inside the store, and not a publicity advertisement to people walking along the walkway in front of the store. Also, there is the problem that by only displaying advertising information on an operation screen of an image forming apparatus or a display screen of a cash register, even most customers inside the store do not notice the advertising information, and thus an adequate publicity effect is not obtained.
Also, in the technology described in Patent Document 3, there is the problem that an apparatus disconnected from a power supply unit cannot be used.
Additionally, the image forming apparatus and a large screen (for example, such as 50 inches) display apparatus connected by a cable are installed in stores, but in a store such as a convenience store or a supermarket, the question of how much selling area to secure is an issue, and because placement of two large devices in this manner results in a reduction in selling area, this approach has not been widely adopted. Also, at present, it may not be possible to secure an installation location in a small store, and so the system is not necessarily advantageous to the store.
For example, the outer dimensions of a 52-inch liquid crystal display (Sharp PN-525) are height 1254 mm, width 742 mm, and depth 92 mm, and weight 44 Kg, the outer dimensions of a liquid crystal display stand (Sharp ID-DS03W) are width 917 mm, depth 870 mm, and the outer dimensions of a digital multifunction peripheral (Sharp MX-3500FN) are height 950 mm, width 645 mm, and depth 670 mm, and weight 120 Kg. Here, when the liquid crystal display and the digital copier are placed in series, the necessary occupied floor area is the width: liquid crystal display stand width: 917 mm times the depth: 1540 mm (digital copier depth 670 mm+liquid crystal display stand depth 870 mm).